magisterrex Retro Games

I've been gaming since the days of Pong and still own a working Atari 2600. I tend to ramble on about retro games, whether they be board games, video games or PC games. Sometimes I digress. Decades after earning it, I'm finally putting the skills I learned while completing my history degree from the University of Victoria to good use. Or so I think. If you're into classic old school gaming, this blog is for you!

Need Reviews?

Got a game or product you want reviewed? Send me an email! Will review board games, PC games, video games and accessories (Xbox 360 or Wii, but also new releases for classic systems - you know who you are!)

Rules of Etiquette:

All comments welcome, excepting those that:

1. Are obvious SPAM
2. Contain profanity
3. Are full of p0rn
4. Advertise or contain links to retail websites
5. Are abusive or potentially libelous

Categories

Categories

Email Subscription

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

RSS Feed

Having been on Twitter for some time now (since November 2008 – my how time flies), and one of the hashtags that interest me is #retrogaming. This particular hashtag is used by all sorts of people to describe their gaming activities: sometimes it refers to some serious oldschool gaming, like the microreviews by @oldgamereviewer on Atari 2600 games or by @0LDSCH00LJUNKIE to refer to one of his amazing “First Round” blog entries; sometimes the reference is much more dubious.

When someone pulls out their PS2 and tweets that they’re retrogaming, somewhere in the dim recesses of my mind I hear Inigo Montoya say, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.“ Inconceivable!

So, what, exactly, do we mean by the word, “retrogaming”?

At the risk of sounding like yet another Internet-based know-it-all, I believe that there are three characteristics that define retrogaming. These are:

At least 10 years have passed since its original North American release. (This is a purely geographical constraint, and you can substitute “Europe” or “Japan” if you wish. Like a good scotch, it needs time to mellow.

Lastgen systems aren’t retrogaming, regardless of their original release date. Hardware history years are like reverse dog years in a way. Games and accessories are released for years as long as the system remains popular, and continue to be released even after the Nextgen system is introduced on the market. Without this rule we’d be calling some systems retrogaming even with a slate of new games being released for them, which is clearly counter-intuitive.

The entire console line are discontinued systems, and no others in the series were ever released. We can call this either the NEC or Sega axiom, which should be self-explanatory for most long-time gamers.

Let’s look at some examples to determine if these elements of retrogaming truly describe what retrogaming is:

From these examples, it appears that these three aspects of retrogaming make for an efficient definition of the genre. We can even test it on older systems, such as the Super Nintendo or the Sega Genesis:

System: Super Nintendo Entertainment System
North American Release / Discontinue Date: 1991 / 1999
Lastgen?: NO
Discontinued Console Series?: NO
Conclusion: Yes, the SNES is a retrogaming system

And again, the definition holds. Even so, does this make a difference in the games you play or the fun you have playing them? Certainly not! Ultimately this is simply a tool to bring clarity to the retrogaming discussion. Of course, if you disagree (or agree!), post your comments!

It is subjective and open to debate but I must admit to using more or less the same definition for retrogaming as yourself. I do think the prefix retro is overused in most walks of life, mostly describing something that is older than the current model and that has got to be wrong. Putting an actual time limit on calling a console retro is silly, if a new console wasn’t released for 15 years you wouldn’t call your latest console retro would you?

[…] was and what a retrogaming video game system might be, in a piece imaginatively entitled, “Defining Retrogaming.” My argument was that to be considered a retrogaming system, a console cannot be a lastgen […]

Let’s define the terms “classic” and “retro” first.
“classic” is everything that survived over centuries, while “retro” can be considered as “something out of a decade”. People that only play games from the 80s, or 90s play “retro games”, or “games released during a decade” I think it doesn’t matter it a game was released on Genesis or PS2, as long as these game were released inside a “decade”. Once the next console generation and gaming technologie is established, then even games made in the “Zeros” (2000-2010) can be considered as “retro”.
Just my two cents.